Feature : My Academy Award Predictions 2012

It's Oscar time! And that means I have to make meaningless predictions for a meaningless awards ceremony. I've decided to only bother predicting the main categories for once because when I try to predict best documentary short and best sound design it just gets embarrassing. Not as embarrassing as Olivia Colman and Tilda Swinton's snubs though, right? Right? HEY-YO!

Best Picture

Warhorse / The Artist / The Descendants / Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close / Hugo / Midnight In Paris / The Help / Moneyball / The Tree of Life


Like so many Best Picture years gone by, there is only one winner. The Artist, 85 years after the birth of the talkies, would be a very deserving winner and a swift two-fingers at David Cameron who thinks British cinema should all be mainstream (not that The Artist is British...but...you know). A black and white silent love story should have merely been a curiosity but it's pure magic and as a result is not simply a matter of "don't believe the hype".

I'm still not a fan of the large amount of films which now can be nominated. 5 would certainly have been enough this year as the inclusions of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and the distinctly average Midnight In Paris were completely unnecessary. And if you're going to have 9 films nominated why on earth isn't one of them We Need To Talk About Kevin?

Best Director

Woody Allen (Midnight In Paris) / Martin Scorsese (Hugo) / Michael Hazanavicius (The Artist) / Terrence Malick (Tree of Life) / Alexander Payne (The Descendants)

With just a handful of films in his 40 year career, Terrence Malick cannot be accused of chasing the awards. Though Michael Hazanavicius, Alexander Payne and Scorsese are all very strong contenders in this pretty hot category I have a feeling this could be Malick's year for a film which I didn't find remotely pretentious. Maybe that says more about me than the film...

As for snubs, not including Lynne Ramsey for We Need To Talk About Kevin seems a massive oversight. And where is Steve McQueen, who gave a minimalist directing masterclass in Shame? Woody Allen certainly didn't need yet another nomination when his effort this year was not exactly Annie Hall.

Best Supporting Actor

Kenneth Branagh (My Week With Marilyn) / Max Von Sydow (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) / Jonah Hill (Moneyball) / Christopher Plummer (Beginners) / Nick Nolte (Warrior)

He's probably actually the least likely to win in this strong category but Jonah Hill's performance in Moneyball was so strong and such a break-out that I'd love to see him win. I'm essentially taking a bullet when the excellent Christopher Plummer will probably win.

Best Supporting Actress

Bernice Bejo (The Artist) / Jessica Chastain (The Help) / Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaids) / Janet Mcteer (Albert Nobbs) / Octavia Spencer (The Help)


I was dead chuffed to see Melissa McCarthy get a nod for her brilliant performance in Bridesmaids. It's just a shame that in a film with such a strong ensemble only one of those ladies got nominated. The winner has to be Octavia Spencer. One question though...in The Help, a film full of excellent performances, where is Bryce Dallas Howard's nomination? For me she was the strongest of a very strong bunch.

Best Actor

Brad Pitt (Moneyball) / George Clooney (The Descendants) / Demien Bichir (A Better Life) / Jean Dujardin (The Artist) / Gary Oldman (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy)

This is probably a one horse race but Jean Dujardin could provide an 'upset' (if you can call it that). Just as last year was finally Firth's year, this year is finally Clooney's.

But where is Michael Fassbender? For my money he would have given Clooney a real run for his money for his performance in Shame.

Best Actress

Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady) / Glenn Close (Albert Nobbs) / Rooney Mara (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) / Michelle Williams (My Week With Marilyn) / Viola Davies (The Help)

Yawn, it's Meryl's year. This category verges on the ridiculous. All the women nominated give fine performances but none as fine as Carey Mulligan in Shame, Tilda Swinton in We Need To Talk About Kevin and Olivia Colman in Tyrannosaur (who gave the best performance of 2011 and probably of the next 5 years too).

Best Original Screenplay

The Artist / Bridesmaids / Margin Call / Midnight In Paris / A Separation


I am yet to see A Separation so maybe I should just keep my big mouth shut but no-one reads this so I'll say what I like. The Artist would be a worthy winner but Bridesmaids is my favourite screenplay here. If Midnight In Paris, a film which points out Ernest Hemingway by saying, "oh look, it's Ernest Hemingway", wins I'll kick a door.

Best Adapted Screenplay

The Descendants / Hugo / The Ides of March / Moneyball / Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy


A very strong category indeed. The Descendants was excellent but any of these films would be worthy winners. Again, no nod for We Need To Talk About Kevin leaves me scratching my itchy, itchy head.

A follow up post with how many of these predictions were correct will follow. Last year it was 25%, a score that would be terrible if we'd had a 5 year old predicting the Oscars outcome.

Review : 'Shame' (2011)

Buying a single ticket to see Shame on a Monday afternoon made me feel like quite the pervert as all I'd been told about the film was that it had garnered excellent reviews and that Michael Fassbender was packing heat. Let's start at the beginning. Fassbender certainly is packing heat. And now that that's out of the way, here is my review of Shame.

The film is rated 18 due to extremely explicit sex scenes. However, I haven't seen a film this sex-filled and yet so unerotic since I sat through Killer Bitch. We meet Brandon (Fassbender) as he goes through his daily routine in his immaculate flat. His eyes meet a pretty redhead's on the subway and at first she is turned on, then gradually repulsed. She gets off the subway train and Brandon gives chase, eventually losing her. If this were a different film this scene would be accompanied with plink-plonk-laugh-laugh music and the red-head would be played by Emma Stone, eventually being his salvation. Shame isn't that film though. Brandon's endless search for la petite mort means he can fall in love with any number of women in a day for just a few minutes. His life is a series of encounters with random women, with prostitutes and with pornography.

When he returns to his clinical apartment one evening he finds Sissy (Carey Mulligan), his wayward sister. He walks in on her in the shower and they both scream. But she doesn't cover herself up. When he passes her a towel she just dries her face and makes no attempt to cover her nudity. It's a scene which is just right of centre...all the dialogue makes sense but something just isn't right. Sissy wants to move in while she chases her singing career all the same. She is clearly as troubled as her brother - early on we hear her literally begging a presumably former lover to see her over the phone and there are criss-crossing self-harm scars on her arms.

She turns out to be a bewitching singer, performing a stripped-back, melancholy version of New York New York in a nightclub. While Brandon's ridiculous boss David (James Badge Dale) whoops and cheers at Sissy's performance Brandon shows a sad pride. He is certainly proud of her but his agony is palpable. Director Steve McQueen's use of long, unbroken shots force you to confront the characters, often in extreme close-ups. Later, when David and Sissy loudly have sex in Brandon's bedroom he shows extreme discomfort but says nothing as he paces his living room then goes out running.

Why are these siblings so troubled? A terrible childhood is hinted at numerous times. At one point Sissy tells Brandon, "we're not bad people, we just come from a bad place". The 'place' in question is never revealed and recovery of either of the characters isn't promised either. When Brandon begins to fall for a work colleague he finds he cannot have sex with her despite her deliberately being played by an actress more vivacious and beautiful than any of the women we've seen him with before. The depths he eventually sinks too are quite disturbing. His nihilism appears to know no bounds. 

There were elements of other film characters in Brandon. I couldn't help but see a little American Psycho's Patrick Bateman. There was also a fair amount of Travis Bickle. Brandon often does what he thinks he ought to do in an effort to blend in with everyone else. When he begins to fall for Marianne at his office he violently and obsessively clears his flat of all sexual material. He even bins his laptop when just deleting files would be enough - he sees it as cleansing himself. 

Shame is an intelligent film that left me with many questions and stayed with me for days after I saw it. Deliberately ambiguous, it is beautifully written, acted and directed. Fassbender and Mulligan are incredible in very difficult roles. Apart from in a tense argument filmed in one shot near the film's close where Mulligan's accent goes a little English they are faultless in their depictions of Sissy and Brandon. We can only guess where these characters will end up but I certainly cared enough to hope for them. 

Review : 'Brazil' (1985)

When George Orwell set a novel (the name of which escapes me now) in 1984 he created a terrifying dystopia, a world full of drones, devoid of freedom. A year after the events of Nineteen-Eighty-Four (remembered the title, look at that) came Terry Gilliam's Brazil. Described by many as "1984 meets Monty Python", on many "Films To See Before You're Dead" lists and holding a 98% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes (important), Brazil is firmly in my top 10 list and I firmly believe it will change the way you look at cinema. It certainly did for me when I was 17.

Instead of Winston Smith we now have the cleverly-named Sam Lowry (how's that for an evocative name?), a meek government official who dreams of life as a superhero, rescuing a beautiful caged goddess. His boring routine in a world crippled by paperwork is turned upside down when a clerical error occurs, the wrong man is accidentally killed and a returned cheque results in Sam meeting his dream woman (she doesn't reciprocate) and going on one hell of a ride. The film runs at over 2 hours and the pace is incredible. It's exhausting.

Calling Brazil "1984 meets Monty Python" is both fair and unfair. The Monty Python part is certainly true. Terry Gilliam writes (with Tom Stoppard  and Charles McKeown) and directs and Michael Palin plays Sam's 'friend' Jack. The film is extremely funny. Parts of it are screwball comedy, there's satire and at time's it's pure farce. It's also incredibly bleak, as bleak as anything in 1984. This is by no means simply Orwell with laughs. Brazil raises issues on the media and government's handling of terrorism ("How many terrorists have you met? Actual terrorists?" questions Sam's dream-woman as he spouts about the need for war) which, 26 years later,  are possibly even more relevant than they were originally.

The claustrophobic visuals of the film are testament to Gilliam. The unnamed city in Brazil (taking its title from the song of the same name, arrangements of which serve as the brilliant, quirky score) is one where you hardly see the sky. The fantastical imagery used in the numerous dream sequences acts as stunning juxtaposition to the rabbit-warren office blocks, government buildings and cell-like apartment complexes. The look of the film owes something to Fritz Lang's Metropolis for sure. The incredible finale, beginning with Sam being interrogated by Jack, was shot in the inside of a power station's cooling tower but you'd never know it. It looks vast and alien.You'd be forgiven for thinking it was a wildly expensive set. Gilliam's inventiveness with visuals is as impressive as the inventiveness of the dialogue, by turns hilarious and jarring.

The use of Jonathan Pryce, a prolific stage actor, as the protagonist is inspired. His slightly theatrical performance is perfectly pitched in such a bizarre film. The scenes he shares with Robert De Niro, playing a renegade repairman (and showing that he truly can do anything as he successfully attempts 'kooky') are some of some of the high points. Stealing just about every scene she appears in is Katherine Helmond as Sam's plastic surgery-obsessed mother who is determined for Sam to take a promotion using her contacts. Kim Greist as Jill, Sam's dream-girl, manages to be radiant in the dream sequences yet is all gritty attitude when he meets her for real. He loves her all the same of course. Michael Palin has never been more unrecognisably sinister. The rest of the supporting cast is like a who's-who list of great British actors, it's an impeccably cast film.

To give away the ending would be a disgrace but let's just say if you're not left breathless by the time those Brazillian drums kick in, you're barely human.

Review : 'Boogie Nights' (1997)

“Dirk Diggler’s penis looked like it was made out of clay”, said my very good friend Mike when I lent him Boogie Nights, recorded on to a 180 minute VHS (in long play for added value) from Sky Premiere (channel 301 on Sky Digital) back in 1999. I saw Boogie Nights in the same month I also saw Goodfellas for the first time, the latter instantly becoming my very favourite film and remaining there to this very day. The parallels between the 2 films are plentiful, with many scenes from Scorsese’s gangster opus paid loving homage to.

The story of a young, strangely innocent young man with a large, dynamic appendage and his rise and fall (baha) in the porn industry shouldn’t be as likeable, funny, moving and human as it is, but somehow it manages to make me laugh and cry. Part of this is Paul Thomas Anderson’s incredibly witty screenplay, full of intelligent, believable dialogue and beautifully drawn characters. A few characters only feature in a handful of scenes yet are as 3-dimensional as many leads. The most notable of these almost-cameo roles is William H Macy as the downtrodden husband of a guilt-free promiscuous porn actress. In 3 short scenes we practically see his entire life. Paul Thomas Anderson directs with aplomb, the 2 and a half hour run time never dragging. The ambitiously big story, spanning nearly 10 years and covering the intertwining tales of over 10 main characters, moves with real pace. The stand-out sequence has a pulsing-beat relentlessly playing in the background as 3 separate stories play out while the characters all hit rock bottom.

Boogie Nights' success as a film though would not exist without its incredible cast. A finer ensemble would be hard to find, with each character delicately and realistically played. For example, how easy it would have been for Don Cheadle’s ‘cowboy’ porn star to have been a hilarious cartoon. However, he plays the part believably, managing to be as endearing as he is ridiculous.

Mark Wahlberg, as Dirk Diggler, the young bar-worker-turned-porn-mega-star, is very impressive. He has the easy, naive charm required of the character aged 17 and then the brattish, drug-addled ego-mania behaviour needed several years later. Dirk is unknowingly very funny and Wahlberg never plays lines for laughs, always completely natural, even when delivering 70s porn dialogue in the not-quite-parody porn scenes. Most impressive of all, in the film's climax (har har), the camera lingers on his face for over a minute in a single shot and, barely moving a muscle, Wahlberg ups the tension 10 fold. It has to be seen to be believed. John C Reilly and Phillip Seymour Hoffman are brilliant as Dirk’s best friends. Heather Graham, as young high-school dropout porn star Rollergirl (“I never take my skates off”) has never been better on screen. She is in many ways Dirk’s female equivalent. Julianne Moore in a somewhat matriarchal role, acting as a sort of mother to Dirk  and Rollergirl as she performs alongside them, is heartbreaking. A mess, addicted to cocaine and estranged from her young children, you really get the sense that she wants to be a better person. 

The real star of this show though is Burt Reynolds in what was heralded as one of the greatest comebacks since Elvis. Rightly Oscar-nominated, as the porn-director who discovers Dirk, he is subtle brilliance. Quietly creating an air of authority and dignity over what easily could have been grubby proceedings, he gives the film part of its real heart together with Wahlberg. The final scene between the two of them is documentary-real, genuinely one of the most moving moments in modern cinema.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, another ensemble drama, is often cited as his masterpiece but I much prefer Boogie Nights. With its stellar cast, stunning script and fearlessly feel-good ending it is certainly one of the best films of 90s.

Review : 'Duck Soup' (1933)

Yes that's right, I don't just watch new films, sometimes I watch old films. Really old films. In black and white. And not Clerks or Raging Bull black and white, proper black and white, like, when it was the norm and stuff!

Duck Soup is widely regarded as the Marx Brothers at their best [citation needed waaaaaaah] and I agree. As a kid my favourite was A Day At The Races because it had horses in it (and I am a racist), but as an adult I can see how Duck Soup is one of the greatest comedies of all time and is more than a little biting (something I missed aged 8).

The loose plot gives the brothers many excuses to be generally hilarious and anarchic, but basically Groucho is the leader of a land and for no particularly good reason (is there ever one? Oo, political) goes to war with another land. The war scenes in particular are stunning in their satire. It is often thrown around that an elderly film or play has "barely dated", but much of Duck Soup could genuinely have been made yesterday. Its most famous sequence (the classic mirror scene) strangely enough is one of the only scenes where you remember the film is pushing 80 years old. Bizarre moments where Groucho, without any character referring to it, is wearing a different costume in every shot while war rages and random stock footage of dolphins, bison etc are inserted could be straight out of The Mighty Boosh.

The fact that this is one of the only Marx Brothers films not to feature a piano solo from Chico (always a highlight of their films for me) or a harp solo from Harpo does nothing to dampen its appeal. The pace is frenetic, the comedy managing to be both intelligent and completely accessible. Released to a lukewarm reception originally (at the height of the Great Depression), there's good reason why Duck Soup is now heralded as one of the greatest comedy films of all time. Released several years before Chaplin's The Great Dictator and several decades before Dr Strangelove (a film that up until 2002 I was calling Dr Strangeglove out of ignorance), it truly is one of the first great satires.

I don't need to quote the film in this review, you just need to go out and see it. If there's a better American comedy film in the future I'll eat my Groucho disguise.

Review : 'Sex and the City 2' (2010)

I loved watching Sex and the City as a young adult. I watched Carrie and the gang Jimmy Choo their way through almost 100 episodes of love, friendship and sex and then I watched the first film and felt the love, friendship and (less) sex all over again. These over-privileged women somehow manage to feel just like us, right?

Rest assured that I went in to Sex and the City 2 slightly unsure of where else the story could possibly go following the perfect Hollywood ending of the first, but a fan of the series nonetheless.

Sex and the City 2 was the worst film I saw in 2010 and may be one of the most obnoxious, offensive, unlikeable films I've ever seen. Gay? Muslim? Female? Male? Vaguely human? Prepare to be personally offended.

Poor Carrie Bradshaw. She married the man she was always meant to be with at the end of the first film and they moved to their wonderful perfect apartment (Mr Big is obviously head of Skynet to be able to afford it, but whatever). 2 years on and UGH he is so annoying! Isn't he Carrie! He just, like, eats Chinese food NOT OFF A PLATE and sits around and it's almost as if he's COMFORTABLE in his 12 YEAR RELATIONSHIP and doesn't feel like he CONSTANTLY HAS TO BE ON HIS BEST BEHAVIOUR. A low point is reached when Big buys Carrie (get this, the pig) a giant flatscreen TV. ARSEHOLE! Carrie, anguished, can't believe he hasn't bought her a piece of jewellery and just, like, can't take it any more. So she goes to take some time out. Does she go to a friend's house? Or just hang out in a cafe? Or go and stay with her parents? No. Not our Carrie. She goes to her old apartment. Yes, that's right, Carrie and Mr Big have their gigantic 5th Avenue palace AND Carrie's hip old apartment.

Meanwhile, Miranda finds that being a lawyer sucks. So she quits. Just like that. How will your family afford stuff like your mortgage and food and running a car and no doubt sending your child to private school and Magda's wages, Miranda? Oh, no need to worry about that? OK cool, thanks.

Charlotte has big problems. She doesn't work and has a full-time nanny for her 2 children. But the nanny couldn't stop one child getting a bit of food on her couture. CHARLOTTE YOU POOR BITCH! And as if that wasn't painful enough, the nanny is REALLY HOT!

Samantha is taking dog hormones or something in order to "trick my body in to feeling younger" and ward off the menopause. Miranda quips that she's tricking her body in to feeling thinner. OH HA HA HA HA HA coz all the Sex and the City girls aren't a SIZE 8!

The less said about the opening....skit?....involving a portrayal of a gay wedding as the sort of sketch that Kenny Everett would go, "no-one will buy this, it's a bit OTT" at, the better.

The girls all fly off to Abu Dhabi to get away from all the hardship in their lives and get to stay in suites that cost thousands of dollars a night, complete with manservant. Carrie's is PROPER BRITISH RESPECTED ACTOR Raza Jafri in a role which sees him as a man who only gets to see his wife every few months due to his low pay. Carrie then sees how spoilt she's been and feels terrible, realising that with all her wealth, nice husband and comfortable career she should be grateful and has a complete turnaround. OR does she just think "me and that Asian are both separated from our spouses *sigh* we're, like, the same"? Bingo.

Throw in a scene where Samantha shows how liberated she is by screaming "YES I HAVE SEX!" at some Muslims in the street who have dared to look at her because she ripped off her clothes and dropped condoms all over the floor (yes, really) and you have a repugnant waste of 2 and a half hours of my life. Here are some things I could have done in that time : had a singing lesson followed by some lunch....gone for a run and then taken some clothes and books down to a charity shop....written a couple of songs, recorded them and then uploaded them to YouTube...cut myself multiple times....written 10,000 more words on why Sex and the City 2 is a terrible, terrible film.

This is a sequel that remembered to put the original stars in the film, remembered to put them in an exotic location and then forgot to give them any heart whatsoever. This story cannot survive on us going "ooo nice shoes Samantha!", we have to like these people. Not only didn't I like them, I didn't recognise them. And the story does NOTHING! There is NO plot development. Awful awful awful.

Oh, and their empowering rendition of I Am Woman in a karaoke bar made me projectile vomit and my projectile vomit burned through the screen and it looked like the end of Inglourious Basterds.

Review : 'The Human Centipede' (2010)

Did you see Hostel or Saw and go, "imagine if a film was MORE horrific and cruel than this, you'd implode as a viewer!"? When I saw the trailer for The Human Centipede I was deeply disturbed. I read reviews that proclaimed it to be 'sickening', 'harrowing' and 'the most disturbing thing you'll ever see'. What is seen cannot be unseen, I knew that from Audition, which stayed with me for several hours afterwards and which I wouldn't be keen to see again. I viewed the trailer and thought, "oh god, how terrifying". I was creeped out by the (very clever) poster (see first image). The more I imagined about The Human Centipede the worse I felt and after a few horrible dreams there was nothing else for it...I had to see the film for myself.

What followed showed me that if the premise for a film is so horrendous, torturous and truly a fate worse than death, the end result is a tame affair. What my imagination presented was 20 times worse than anything in The Human Centipede. I think sometimes a premise is just too stupid to truly offend.

With a standard horror opening (2 hotties break down on a rainy night and end up getting 'help' at the house of the only psycho in town), the film then goes a way which is at least original. It's certainly a bold story but cannot be stretched to its 91 minute running time. The psycho the girls have stumbled on is a crazed surgeon who "hates human beings" and after 4 minutes in his company I was sure that director Tom Six had made The Human Centipede with a twinkle in his eye (he proclaims the film to be "100% medically accurate" which either makes him a funny prankster filmmaker or a needs-to-be-locked-up mad man). The film is high-camp and anyone who views it as a genuinely terrifying horror is missing the point. The doctor intends to stitch the girls plus a loud Japanese man together, mouth-to-anus to create a single digestive system. Stupid, yes?

Following a laughable escape attempt and the operation itself (surprisingly lacking in any gore...this film doesn't present us with much blood and no poo) there isn't much for the human centipede to do. The doctor makes it walk around on all fours a bit which looks really creepy for about 10 seconds and eventually the front of the centipede defecates in to the mouth of the girl behind, who reacts by unrealistically looking horrified, rather than pulling away really hard, ripping her stitches before vomiting uncontrollably. I think if someone did a poo in my mouth I'd be sick immediately. Hopefully I'll never have to find out if all I'd do would be to look horrified. This scene is the infamous scene in the film and by that time you're just kind of bored. The doctor is by far the most interesting thing on screen and even his self-consciously schlock-horror performance has grown repetitive by the hour mark.

The final act sees the centipede attempt to escape while 2 cops who make Police Squad look like NYPD Blue search the house. The ending is described by a couple of people I know as one of the bleakest things they've ever seen. I don't want to spoil the final image but...it isn't any bleaker than what it's preceded by.  In fact I'd say it's a very low-key, who-cares ending compared to the film's initial promise of shock and terror. Also, again without giving anything away, how the final image comes about is extremely contrived and made me do a smug little eye-roll.

I'm not saying The Human Centipede has failed. As a yukky, original black comedy chiller, a sort of pastiche on the torture porn made popular by Eli Roth et al it succeeds (if a little dull in the middle hour). And for a film called The Human Centipede you never care particularly for any of the humans involved. A few moments where the centipede is left alone and they wordlessly grasp each other's hands are semi-affecting, but never enough to make you take the film seriously. It does however look fantastic. It's very well shot and the stark lines of the house setting make for a distinctive look. How much of this is an accident and how much is down to Six's skill as a director remains to be seen. Time will tell...The Human Centipede II - Full Sequence is out later this year, promising to be 100% medically inaccurate. I, for one, can't wait (to view it for free, ain't paying for this shit).

All in all a bizarre little film that's merits are not in its shocking, disturbing imagery but more in the way that at least an original film that is having a little wink at the audience (no pun intended...ha ha, anus) has been made and recognised. As a piece of horror it doesn't succeed. As a serious chiller it doesn't succeed. But as a high-camp, tongue-in-cheek (PUN!), oddity it does succeed. It has more in common with The Rocky Horror Picture Show than with Audition or Hostel.